Description
Background: Hospital clinical staff experiences of day-to-day work, with deadlines, schedules and routines, are unlike any other profession in the modern world. Faced with ever-increasing cost constraints as well as extensive demands for services, hospital staff, more than ever before, are facing accelerating workloads and pressures to work quickly and efficiently. However, to date, little research has investigated how the sociotemporal structures (pace, punctuality, scheduling, linearity, flexibility) in hospitals are associated with staff burnout and job satisfaction. The aim of this study was to investigate the complex interplay of relationships between hospital staff’s perceived sociotemporal structures, burnout and job satisfaction.Methods: Cross-sectional survey data of hospital staff (n=314) was collected from four major hospitals in Australia. Most participants worked as a nurse (38.5%) or doctor (19.3%), and had been working in the same hospital for three or more years (75.1%). The survey included subscales from the Organizational Temporality Scale (OTS) and validated measures of staff wellbeing (burnout and job satisfaction). A novel psychological network analysis approach, in conjunction with complementary well-established statistical methods (e.g., path analysis) to analyse the results.
Results: Psychological network analysis techniques identified that “pace” (the tempo or rate of hospital activity) occupies the central position in understanding the relationship between temporality and staff wellbeing. Using a structural equation modelling approach, serial mediation models further identified that pace affects staff burnout, which in turn influences job satisfaction.
Implications: These findings are important in revealing that our understanding of staff burnout and job satisfaction can be significantly improved by placing more focus on temporal norms, and in particular hospital pace. Our findings highlight the need for managerial interventions including developing organisational policies aiming to give staff more control over the pace of their work as these are likely to have positive effects on staff wellbeing.
| Period | 13 Oct 2021 |
|---|---|
| Event title | ACHSM Asia-Pacific health leadership congress |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Canberra, AustraliaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |